The camp cafeteria is behind the swinging saloon doors of the “Diamond Horseshoe,” and the administrative staff, including the Ewans, work out of the Main Street “hotel” advertising unique accommodations: “Miss Kathy’s Single Rooms for Single Girls.”

Everywhere, the theme holds. Traffic noise is kept at bay by the hills on three sides of the camp, and visitors are far more likely to see a horse than a sedan.

Ewan, meanwhile, forgoes the cowboy hat on all but a few days in summer, and only then to welcome groups of new campers. He carries an iPhone and looks the part of an administrator.

And he has never lost his faith in the value of camping.

“One of the main things I believe is that kids need to be outside,” he told me. “They need to be away from electronics. Whether it’s in their backyard or at a camp, it doesn’t matter — they need to be building forts, chasing frogs and getting dirty. Children need that time at play to develop. Everything we do is based on that.”

Ewan said he kept a journal starting when he was 11, and there have only been two summers since then when he wasn’t involved in a camp in some capacity.

“Our camp is very small, physically,” he said of Rawhide, which consists of 37 acres off Lilac Road just west of I-15. “I’ve worked at camps that were 5,000 acres. We’re so very compact that every day, even after 12 years, I see things I’ve never seen before. The Chowns had a real vision for what they wanted here.”

That original couple moved to Texas and sold Rawhide Ranch in 2000 to the Orange County investors who now employ Tom and Val Ewan.

Online, I found a local Gainesville newspaper article dated this spring that depicted Clarence Chown still in pursuit of the Old West, erecting Rawhide-like structures on his Cooke County property: a saddle shop, a wedding chapel.

Here in Bonsall, where the old film-set designer turned a hog farm into a believable Old West outpost, Ewan sees himself as curator and custodian, in addition to his duties as camp director.

“We’re kind of the keepers of their dream,” he said.

Know anyone with an interesting job or outlook on life? Contact Tom Pfingsten at fallbrooktown@gmail.com